Double or Nothing: Games of the mind towards workplace Success (or Failure)

The Casting (Lasting) Impression Couch: Confirmation Bias and Availability Heuristic

At times, what makes work difficult is not the actual work tasks but the preconceived notions that the manager or team leader has over an employee. A boss who is skeptical towards Employee A might give much more difficult tasks over Employee B just because the latter was able to perform better in the past. You might say that where is the red flag here? The team manager just made the right call for favoring Employee B right? right? In other cases, it is true but in this particular situation, Employee A was given tasks of much harder difficulty. In fact, when A was given the exact same task as Employee B (with a different manager) a few months ago, Employee A did a much better performance.

This can be explained by the concept of Availability Heuristic which states that people tend to make judgments based on readily available data. This can be either recency (information that occurred on a latest or recent timeframe) or representativeness heuristic (stereotyping and unjustifiable labelling). A clumsy team member who often makes hurried decisions in a team building game can be mistakenly perceived as untrustworthy of making a good team presentation (two completely unrelated situations).

A manager who has a traumatic past towards job-hopping employees tend to see a team member with such background in the same light. Though there is somewhat a historical evidence for such perception, the unproportionate preconception can be damaging to how the latter's work aptitude is assessed and therefore how he or she performs at work. Managers can make the employee's work life a nightmare experience by testing the candidate's loyalty in an apprehensive, paranoid manner and therefore, assign the latter to tasks with higher difficulty or with higher chances of failure.

This can be explained by the Confirmation Bias which pertains to a person's tendency to lean towards one's preconceived notions or beliefs towards another person or a group. Such person is not only inclined to make judgments that based on his bias or preconception but the more destructive aspect of it, he is also incline to make decision that increases the likelihood of that preconceived notion. A paranoid partner that suspect one is cheating might consistently nag at his or her partner which then increases the likelihood of the suspected cheating. In the workplace, a skeptical boss might make an unsuspecting employee's life miserable and when the employee indeed fails, he would say "I told you so".

Sucking-up to the boss: Psychology behind favoritism at work

Have you wondered why a certain workmate of yours always seems to have the "good graces" of your boss despite of committing mistakes or showing negative workplace behavior? Halo effect is the tendency to see a person or a group favorably disregarding actual performance or other desired characteristics. A good-looking teammate who is perceived as attractive by your boss can also be biasedly seen as "smart" and "performing at work" even if this is not the actual case. A teammate who is cordial towards your boss and his friends might be viewed as "productive" and "work-smart".

A Generation X boss who was born in the early 80s tend to see his fellow Gen X team members as more "loyal" and "disciplined" compared to the younger generations. This situation can be best explained by the Leniency effect or a person's tendency to see people with similar attributes, characteristics, or background as more favorable than others. In this case, similarity in age and generation comes into play. This also explains why people who are both from the province tend to have more social affinity towards each other compared to those who are born and living in the metro.

I Knew It All Along!: The Hindsight Bias

An employee resigns from her position and the manager said "I knew it!" is the most classic example of Hindsight bias in the workplace. This phenomenon pertains to a person's miscalculation of their ability to predict present events based on the events that have happened or observations made in the past.

This psychological concept has a great deal of similarity with deja vu which simply means "I've seen this before". The problem with this cognitive bias is that similarly with other types of biases, it is highly subject to false perception of causality and reality. A manager who highly suspects a "resigning employee" because of her rejecting the former's sexual advances might overlook the real reason for such decision and blame the latter's "consistent rejection" of his indecent invites to join "intimate meetings" and "night-outs". The manager then will say "I knew all along that she'll resign".

You don't like Pineapples on your Pizza right?, right?: The False Consensus effect

A department votation has been facilitated by a manager to gauge if the team prefers to have a higher one-day pay or to have an extra one-day vacation for the incoming weekend. The manager thinking, that the whole team will choose the former and to rather have an additional pay instead of having a long-weekend, was stunned when the votes came in. The employees had chosen to have the holiday off and the manager was somewhat displeased by the voter turn-out. False Consensus effect pertains to the misconception that one's opinions or view is similar to that of the majority or the entirety of the team.

Same is true when a particular co-worker dislikes you and starts to spread exaggerated or false rumors against you. The team might view you favorably but because of this co-worker's strong opinion towards you, you'll then become surprised one day that team members starts to treat you in an estranged manner.

If one does not like pineapples on their pizza, it does not mean that the rest of the team should share the same resentment towards the novel snack time favorite.

Voodoo. You do?: What is Apophenia?

Employee A who was once a scapegoat member of Team X, a team who is known for consistently delivering when it comes to one failed project after another was recently transferred to Team Y. Then new management came in (external factor) which provided tighter deadlines and unrealistic demands. The clever members of Team Y then started to blame Employee A, "You are a jinx to this group, we don't want you on our team!". Such is an example of a cognitive bias known as Apophenia coming into play and this phenomenon pertains to the error in conceiving patterns related to success and failure. People mistaking unrelated factors as the absolute cause of a certain implication or situation.

Such concept have a great deal of similarity with Scapegoat theory except that Apophenia can either pertain to either a negative outcome or a positive one. A team's success can mistakenly be associated to an entirely unrelated object or situation. A classic example is when an employee says, "Thanks to my lucky handkerchief, our sales have gone up for this month!". In modern sports, a prime example of a victim of the Apophenia phenomenon is the Dallas Mavericks All-star Point Guard, Kyrie Irving who was previously labelled as "toxic" and "unprofessional" by fans of his previous teams and therefore, being blamed for the team's failures. Now, he is poised to win the NBA Championship together with his running buddy, Luka Doncic.

The Fool's Gamble: The Optimism Bias

Rockstar Employee A is known for being the golden boy of Company Z due to his past collection of successful projects. However, Manager A was appalled when he heard the news that Client X has declined the proposal of Rockstar employee and instead chose another company to be their partner. Optimism Bias is one's propensity towards miscalculating efforts or actions to consistently have positive outcomes or results. A classic example is a gambler who had win the casino slots in his first try and foolishly gambled all of his money to win more, only to face gambling one catastrophe after the other. However, not everything about this cognitive bias is negative as the optimism (in the right amount or extent) can serve as a motivation to persevere more towards a successful outcome. An aspiring business woman's zealousness towards her craft can be her key towards unprecedented success.

The Unlucky One

Being "singled out" is one of the worst situations an employee can have in a workplace. Whether a person is singled out as a reason for a company's declining sales or a mass layoff being viewed as the only or one of the very few alternative's to the company's downward spiral. Prime example of which is a new management looking for ways to cut costs.